Easter Rising - Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth
For All Nails #267B: Easter Rising - Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth by Noel Maurer ---- :Barcelona, Venezuela :10 April 1977 Francisco Buceli was not a happy man. He was not an unhappy man, either. He was simply too focused, for today was the day. His men, wearing brown uniforms that could almost be mistaken for civilian work clothes, were clustered downstairs. The building was near the target. Other buildings near the target were similarly packed full of brown-uniformed men. Other buildings near other targets were packed full of similarly-dressed men. And, in a marvelous touch, the streets were full of civilians wearing brown clothing. The word had gone out, hoy lleve café, and the people had responded. It was good. He murmured into the radio he carried with him. It was amazingly small, this radio. He could carry it strapped to his belt. Eses gringos, he thought construyen cosas increíbles. He checked his weapons, a North American assault weapon. Eses norteamericanos, he thought, no construyen cosas tan increíbles. He missed his old Rojas-65. But this norteamericano weapon, it might be heavy, and it might require too much maintenance, but it was accurate, and it would kill. And there were very very very many of them in the once-and-future New Granada. His men were very good at maintenance. The radio crackled. "Alfa. Listos. Estuvo." Mayor Buceli did not respond. He did not need to. It cracked again. "Beta. Listos. Estuvo." And so it went. Carlos. Delta. Éco. Fox. Gol. Hotel. And so on. They were ready. "¿Sargento?" asked Buceli. "Mayor. Están en sus lugares. Los blancos están alineados. Todo bien." This was the voice of Sargento Julio Aguilar, without whom Mayor Buceli's job would have been impossible. Aguilar knew the men. He knew what they were thinking, feeling, and wanting. He pushed them. He inspired them. The Mayor and the other officers were regal figures. Aguilar was the face of the FANG, the face of liberation. He had another face tattooed on his forearm, one which he liked to joke was the real face of liberation. Until the Baliazo, Buceli and Aguilar had been doing their level best to kill each other. For the face tattooed on Aguilar's forearm was none other than the visage of Tómas Jefferson. They had greater enemies now. They waited. And waited. And then the radio crackled. "Hay jugo en Bogotá. Repito. Jugo en Bogotá. Estuvo." "Tiempo para hacer jugo," Buceli told Aguilar. Aguilar smiled. It was a frightening sight. "Hacemos jugo, mayor." "Bien. Muy bien." The mayor looked through his binoculars at the street below. Two limón soldiers stood guard, smoking cigarettes. Behind them lay the embassy of Great Britain to the Republic of Venezuela. Buceli spat. He got to his feet. ¡Ay! Malditas elbejes mexicanas. El equipo se usa, ¡pero mis malditas rodillas! FN1 He looked at the men around him. He smiled. "Vámonos." He clicked on the radio. "Hacemos jugo. Vayan. Estuvo." There was no shouting, no jubilation, although Buceli could feel the energy. Instead, in well-practiced motions, most of his men swept out the door and to the ground floor, from which they would disperse to make the assault. Buceli, feeling regretful, did not join them. Instead he headed to the roof. As he went up the stairs, he heard the crump of the first mortars landing in the embassy compound, and the pop-pop of sniper rifle. He allowed himself a tight-lipped smile. The Rising had reached Barcelona. ---- :Cartagena, Granada Libre :10 April 1977 Javier Chapa was a happy man. He was always happy. He took nothing seriously. In fact, it took all the self-control he had not to let the sign reading "GRANADA LIBRE" in big capital letters send him into paroxysms of laughter. Ricardo Rubro was much more serious. "This is serious. If you continue to be so light-hearted you may be marked as unreliable." Chapa couldn't help it. He guffawed. "That ... that," he couldn't contain himself, "that would be unfortunate." Then he guffawed again. Rubro did not understand the joke. "It would, Comrade Chapa. You should be more serious." "Yes, I should." Javier. "And I promise, once the revolution comes, I will." This sent him into another spasm of laughter. Rubro did not see the humor. " Comrade, this is not a time for laughter." "Oh, you Jeffersonists are so serious, Ricardo!" said Chapa. "You've got to learn to see the humor in life. After all, you are fighting for King and Country." This sent him into another spate of laughter. "I am not fighting for the King," said Rubro, "although I respect his leadership in the present crisis. I am fighting for the Fatherland, against the ancient enemies of the People." "Oh, God, Rubro," replied Chapa. "Give it a rest, will you?" They were lying on the third floor of a bombed-out factory building near the railroad yards to the north of the central city. Bogotá had fallen to the armies of the Bornholm Alliance two months ago. Cartagena had been pacified for a year, and it had been quiet for most of that time. There were few English infantrymen to be seen. That's what Chapa -- a colonel in the FANG -- and Rubro -- a "general" in the Ejército Jeffersonista de Liberación Nacional -- were counting on. This plan had come down directly from Elbittar's office, wherever that was nowadays, and he had to agree that it was brilliant. The only thing that Chapa didn't like was the new brown uniforms they had all been issued for the action. He much preferred his old jungle camouflage. "It is a shitty kind of war, and the color of our uniforms is appropriate," he had said. Rubro didn't seem to appreciate the commentary. "Ah, it is the Jeffersonian influence, I see," Chapa had responded. Rubro seemed to appreciate that even less. FN2 Anyway, they were where they were. A group of teenagers around the railroad yards had begun to throw rocks at the soldiers. "Faggot!" they yelled, in Spanish. "Cocksucking sodomy-taking male prostitutes!" they shouted. The soldiers were remarkably well-behaved, ignoring the provocations. Until one of the teenagers got up the courage to fire a tirotito. FN3 Chapa smiled. The world got down on Mexico for its high rates of juvenile delinquency. Well, now an invention of some young Mexican maladroits would prove invaluable in liberating the Fatherland. "One day, I hope our country will be so free and so well educated that our youth gangs will produce such engineers," Chapa had said. Rubro hadn't appreciated that either. The tirotitos proved too much for the soldiers. One of them shot back at the youths. Over their heads, but that was sufficient. "Now," repeated Chapa into his radio. That was the signal for civilians to begin rioting in carefully selected locations around the railroad yards. Mobs gathered as if from nowhere The soldiers didn't react, but Chapa hadn't expected them too. No, responding to rioters would be the job of the collaborationist police. It took some time, but soon the wooooo-wooooo of their squad lokes could be heard. The lokes screeched to a halt and disgorged the police, who lined up to contain the rioters. And were then cut down by machine gun fire. The weapons had been placed days ago, and manned around the clock. "Excellent!" shouted Chapa. "The game is on!" The police reeled back, those that weren't cut to shreds. "This will get the English out of their holes!" FN4 And it did. The English wasted no time in responding. They were soldiers, and good ones at that. Within minutes three mechanized fighting vehicles rattled past the building where the commander and his attaché were hiding, rumbling towards the disturbance. But they didn't rumble all that close. Brown suited civilians had already begun to put up barricades. They looked flimsy, but the FANG had spent a lot of time practicing how to erect vehicular barriers in minimum time: they slowed the armored vehicles to a crawl. A crawl which gave Granadino civilians enough time to heave harrisons at the fighting machines. FN5 Four of the vehicles quickly caught fire. The others began spraying machine gun fire all around. Bullets ripped into the brave civilian attackers. Several armored vehicles saw their wheels blown off by FANG infiltrators who crawled across the rubble in their brown uniforms and affixed mines to them, but it had little effect on the withering machine-gun fire. And the English were true professionals. Their soldiers wasted no time in leaving the protection of their vehicles. The infantry patrols made sure that potential mine-affixers -- and these "mines" were blobs of plastic explosive, capable of being tossed onto the treads -- could not get close. A few of the patrollers went down. But the English ... Chapa squinted. Were they Chinese? Whoever they were, they were brave. Their bravery broke through Chapa's levity, if only for a moment. "What a waste," he mumbled. Full-sized terrors quickly followed the armored vehicles. The English had learned in the block-to-block bloodletting of the Battle of Bogotá that terrors were very useful in urban combat. They were about to unlearn that lesson. Streaks of light slammed into the terror's lightly armored sides. They exploded, belching fire from their turrets. "How do you like that, you sons of whores?" yelled Rubro. Good to see the man can get some enjoyment from life, thought Chapa. A gyropter thundered overhead, and another streak of light rose to greet it. It exploded in a hail of metal. A second followed, and then a third. The norteamericano weapons were proving their worth. Rubro hollered yet again, a cry of pure joy. And Chapa laughed. These poor English! They never really had reconciled themselves to losing their old Empire. Unfortunately, they had picked the wrong place to establish a new one. ---- Forward to FAN #267C (New Granada/American War) (11 April 1977): Easter Rising - The Alliance Strikes Back. Return to For All Nails. Category:New Granada Category:American War